Hanlon's razor

English Etymology Named by analogy with en Occam's razor after Robert J. Hanlon of Scranton, Pennsylvania, who was credited for the adage he submitted to a compilation of various jokes related to Murphy’s law published in Arthur Bloch’s Murphy’s Law Book Two: More Reasons Why Things Go Wrong! (1980); however, a similar quotation appears in Robert A. Heinlein’s “Logic of Empire” (1941), “You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity”, wherein it is described as the “devil theory” of sociology.Hanlon's Razor Proper noun The adage stating "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." en 1980 October Playboy Interview: G. Gordon Liddy 211 Playboy Chicago 27 10 0032-1478 w:G. Gordon Liddy https://archive.org/details/Playboy101980 https://archive.org/details/Playboy101980/page/n222/mode/1up McCord may have bungled the taping of the internal doors, all right, but remember Hanlon's Razor, which is a maxim that states: "Never blame on malice that which can be fully explained by stupidity." en 2017-09-30 w:Nate Silver The Media Needs To Stop Rationalizing President Trump's Behavior w:FiveThirtyEight https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-media-needs-to-stop-rationalizing-president-trumps-behavior/amp/ But at many other times, journalists come up with overly convoluted explanations for Trump's behavior ("this seemingly self-destructive emotional outburst is actually a clever political strategy!") when simpler ones will suffice ("this is a self-destructive emotional outburst."). In doing so, they violate both Ockham's razor and Hanlon's razor — the latter of which can be stated as "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." https://web.archive.org/web/20170930203312/https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-media-needs-to-stop-rationalizing-president-trumps-behavior/ en Translations Chinese: Mandarin: cmn 漢隆剃刀 French: fr rasoir d’Hanlon m Polish: pl brzytwa Hanlona f References Further reading en eponyms